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Linux Kernel CVE-2026-72472

| EUVDEUVD-2026-59371 CRITICAL
2026-08-15 Linux GHSA-r6m9-5pwq-jfm2
Critical
Disputed · 9.8 Vendor: Linux
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Severity by source

Sources disagree (Medium–Critical)
Vendor (Linux) PRIMARY
9.8 CRITICAL
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
vuln.today AI
5.8 MEDIUM

Locally-triggered NFSv4 client race (AV:L, AC:H), needs local access to drive lock ops (PR:L); realistic impact is client crash (A:H) with only potential, unproven memory disclosure/corruption (C:L/I:L).

3.1 AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:H
4.0 AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:L/VI:L/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
SUSE
5.5 HIGH
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Red Hat
5.5 MEDIUM
qualitative

vuln.today treats the vendor’s rating as authoritative. A higher third-party CVSS (e.g. CISA-ADP) is shown for transparency but does not drive the headline severity.

CVSS VectorVendor: Linux

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Lifecycle Timeline

5
Analysis Generated
Aug 17, 2026 - 09:41 vuln.today
CVSS changed
Aug 17, 2026 - 06:22 NVD
9.8 (CRITICAL)
Patch available
Aug 15, 2026 - 07:20 EUVD
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 05:57 cve.org
CRITICAL 9.8
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 05:57 cve.org
UNKNOWN (no severity yet)

DescriptionCVE.org

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

nfs: use nfsi->rwsem to protect traversal of the file lock list

Lingfeng identified a bug and suggested two solutions, but both appear to have issues.

Generally, we cannot release flc_lock while iterating over the file lock list to avoid use-after-free (UAF) problems with file locks. However, functions like nfs_delegation_claim_locks and nfs4_reclaim_locks cannot adhere to this rule because recover_lock or nfs4_lock_delegation_recall may take a long time. To resolve this, NFS switches to using nfsi->rwsem for the same protection, and nfs_reclaim_locks follows this approach. Although nfs_delegation_claim_locks uses so_delegreturn_mutex instead, this is inadequate since a single inode can have multiple nfs4_state instances. Therefore, the fix is to also use nfsi->rwsem in this case.

Furthermore, after commit c69899a17ca4 ("NFSv4: Update of VFS byte range lock must be atomic with the stateid update"), the functions nfs4_locku_done and nfs4_lock_done also break this rule because they call locks_lock_inode_wait without holding nfsi->rwsem. Simply adding this protection could cause many deadlocks, so instead, the call to locks_lock_inode_wait is moved into _nfs4_proc_setlk. Regarding the bug fixed by commit c69899a17ca4 ("NFSv4: Update of VFS byte range lock must be atomic with the stateid update"), it has been resolved after commit 0460253913e5 ("NFSv4: nfs4_do_open() is incorrectly triggering state recovery") because all slots are drained before calling nfs4_do_reclaim, which prevents concurrent stateid changes along this path. Also, nfs_delegation_claim_locks does not cause this concurrency either since when _nfs4_proc_setlk is called with NFS_DELEGATED_STATE, no RPC is sent, so nfs4_lock_done is not called. Therefore, nfs4_lock_delegation_recall from nfs_delegation_claim_locks is the first time the stateid is set.

AnalysisAI

Use-after-free memory corruption in the Linux kernel's NFSv4 client fixes a race in file-lock list traversal, where nfs_delegation_claim_locks, nfs4_locku_done, and nfs4_lock_done manipulated the inode file-lock list without holding nfsi->rwsem, allowing the list to change under iteration during delegation recall and lock reclaim. The fix serializes traversal under nfsi->rwsem and relocates locks_lock_inode_wait into _nfs4_proc_setlk. This is a locally-triggered kernel race affecting NFSv4 client mounts; no public exploit identified at time of analysis, EPSS is low (0.21%), and it is not on CISA KEV.

Technical ContextAI

The affected component is the Linux kernel NFSv4 client's byte-range file locking and state/delegation recovery machinery (fs/nfs). File locks are tracked on a per-inode list normally protected by flc_lock, but recovery paths such as nfs_delegation_claim_locks and nfs4_reclaim_locks cannot hold flc_lock across recover_lock / nfs4_lock_delegation_recall because those calls may block for a long time (RPC round-trips). The kernel therefore uses the inode's nfsi->rwsem to protect list traversal instead; the bug is that several paths dropped or never took that protection, so the lock list could be mutated concurrently, yielding a use-after-free on nfs4_state / file-lock objects. The root cause is a classic race-condition / concurrent-list-mutation UAF (CWE-416-class, though CWE is listed N/A here); the regression window traces to commit c69899a17ca4 which made VFS byte-range lock updates atomic with the stateid update.

RemediationAI

Upstream fix available (stable-tree commits); apply the vendor-released patched kernels 6.12.97, 6.18.40, or 7.1.5 (or 7.2-rc1) matching your branch, obtained via your distribution's kernel updates rather than manual patching where possible. The specific fixes are kernel.org stable commits 1cda95bf2e9c, f161ef7b0dd2, e68035178e65, and 4837fb36219e; verify your running branch maps to one of these. If immediate patching is not possible, the practical compensating control is to reduce reliance on the vulnerable NFSv4 client path - avoid NFSv4 delegations (mount with options that disable delegation where supported, or fall back to NFSv3 which does not exercise this delegation-recall/state-recovery code) on affected hosts, accepting the performance and caching trade-offs of losing delegations; restricting which hosts act as NFSv4 clients also shrinks exposure. There is no remote-facing feature to disable, so network-level controls are of limited value here.

Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Important
Product Status
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 16.0 Affected

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CVE-2026-72472 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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